Mini Piecing Potholder Quilts

I need to work on my quilt piecing and I like to try out lots of different patterns….I’m not good at committing to a whole full-sized quilt. I like to dabble. This will be a dabble post which will eventually end in, “hey, I made some potholders!”

Gripping the edge of your seat, aren’t you?

I saw this sort of mod pinwheel pattern on the Art Gallery Fabrics blog/site. That was February and I’ve been trying to think of how to apply it ever since. Go look at it. Really. It’s cute. I’ll give you a minute. Look at the measurements while you’re there…….

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Ok, so, I wanted to take that pattern to the next level….that level where I stress my tendonitis, make my glasses prescription completely obsolete and make sure I had ample opportunity to use my seam ripper. If that is to be my measurement of success, then I am a winner!

Enter, the 2.5″ block.

You know, when you have these patterns laying out they’re really cute….when you cut them up tiny and throw them in a bundle, I don’t even think the Merry Pranksters would have had a good trip.

So I broke them up a bit with more…mellow. Mellow as a noun….I think we can thank the Merry Pranksters for that as well.

I like this photo cuz they’re up next to a traditional pinwheel pattern…

I had a lot of quilting classes lately, and in one of the classes I used a Kona 200 thread count muslin. It’s very nice…and I thought, why let that muslin, batting and stellar (cough) quilting go to waste?

I chopped out squares, right out of the middle, of the best parts to use as the back of the potholders. That’s right. Rebel.

 

I dig it. I quilted the tops to the InsulBright I’ve used before and, as the directions state to do, this batting covers the bottom. It’s a bit slip-slidey to bind these together even with pinning, but it’s doable. I have a pucker here and there, but nothing being smooshed by a hot pan can’t ignore.

I think the tops are super cute. They really weren’t that hard – I only ripped apart 2 smaller blocks in stack of 20 or so because I had the center seam a smidge off.

This blurry photo clearly demonstrates that late at night photos on my iPhone aren’t as awesome as they seem on Instagram.

But the point really is that I was tinkering with some Quilt As You Go…and mama likes it. I’m not going to do a whole full quilt in it (SEE!) but I dig it. It turned out really cute. I’m giving these all away to some mommies I work with, and this one is all specialized with doggy fabric because this mommy rescues dogs and places them in new homes. She’s amazing.

And the back…

I still have a bit of that cartoony doggy fabric … I will have to find more dog lovers. I’m of the feline-lover persuasion myself.

But wait, there’s more. I have some UFOs out of this.

I’m calling this PIE….because, well, it looks like pie.

My photo taking failed us here…it’s on a large white rectangle…and it’s just screaming for some red Pie embroidery, isn’t it? I see a kitchen wall hanging.

And, as glimpsed above, I took some of the Boersma’s bag of scraps that I still have from the feather block and made a traditional pinwheel. I think I’m going to back and bind it in purple and keep it. Maybe. The boys in the house seem to like it.

So…Happy Mother’s Day and I hope you get a potholder…or something. This has been my week of quilting. Stay tuned for another sewing room as science lab coming up, a kids’ craft project that uses fabric scraps and baby clothes.